


Escape

by MandoKain



Series: Aliit [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Cain has Some Trauma, Gen, Prequel, mentions of poor POW treatment, they have a gnarly scar as a result
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 12:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20191945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MandoKain/pseuds/MandoKain
Summary: A short, intense flashback, this takes place during the six weeks Cain was missing after their battalion and General were killed, detailing their escape from the place they were being held during their capture by the Separatists. Content warnings for violence and blood.





	Escape

As soon as the door opened again, they went for it, darting forward from the very back of the room. They’d been waiting for weeks now for their chance, and had learned as much as they could about this place and the guards and everything else, suffering shocks and bruises and all manner of verbal abuse. This time, when the guard opened the cell to come get them, they went for him. Cain leapt, leg out, and kicked him hard in the nose, knocking him backwards. His head slammed into the wall, and he slid down with eyes closed. Their hands were cuffed to keep them from using the Force, but they found the keys on his belt and got their hands free. They used the cuffs on the guard instead, threw him into the cell (with no little effort), and kept the keys.

Then they were racing down the hallway. They knew where their lightsabers were being kept and they needed them back if they wanted any chance of escaping intact. Not only that but no self-respecting Jedi would leave weapons like that in the hands of people like this.

The grunts Cain ran into on the way there fell easily, and they got in and out of the armory quickly. By this time an alarm was blaring, loud and shrill and oppressive. Their limbs ached from the bruises under their prison clothes, but they didn’t have time to find their old robes. They had to get to the exit. They had to get out. They had to get _home_.

Dashing through corridors. Guard after guard. Some landed blows before they were knocked out, and Cain hissed and swore. As they drew closer to the entrance, the guards were armed. They were cut, now, as they went for the way out, and they were almost there when a hissing voice chilled their blood.

The person responsible for their previous bruises, the shocks, the pain of the last two weeks, stepped out in front of them. Cain lowered their center and drew the shoto, the lightsaber small enough to fit in this corridor. They had to get past that one person and they could get out. They could get gone. They _had_ to get out.

The alarms seemed even louder and more oppressive here, pressing against Cain from all sides, and they let out a whine of pain. They heard the hissing laughter of their tormenter and swallowed the instinctive whimper that rose in their throat. _Just get out._ That was all they had to do. _Get past him, get out and go home. That’s it._

They ran. The creature was ready, a short sword of some kind in his hand, curved and wickedly sharp. They struck and he struck and back and forth, Cain hissing in pain, suppressing whimpers that were cries in their mind. They got him turned around, so their back was to the entrance. All they needed was—

A clawed hand escaped below the shoto, and slashed across their stomach. Cain screamed, a bloodcurdling, ear-splitting sound accompanied by a blast of the Force, something they hadn’t thought they had the strength for. The Trandoshan went flying backwards, and Cain went for the exit, as fast as they could manage. They got out of the compound, one hand clamped over their side, and they pushed forwards. The wound burned and stung and screamed, and Cain was crying as they pushed their way across the salt flat under a purple sky. They heard a hissing cry and laughter of those behind them. There was no pursuit. The Separatists didn’t expect Cain to survive out there anyway.

The short lightsaber was shoved into their waistband with the other, they didn’t remember doing that. There was a rubbish pile, refuse from the base they’d just escaped, some ways away, and they made for it. It was a chance. It was a chance, that was all they needed, was a chance. Cain was crying, still, but the sobs were just dry, harsh sounds as they made it to the garbage heap. They couldn’t see pursuit, still. Maybe they’d get lucky enough that the reptilian hunter wouldn’t come after them at all, wasn’t just giving them a head start as prey. If they could make it to the mountains they’d seen in the distance, they could survive long enough to figure out where they were, and find a way off.

They bit hard on their lip, whimpering, as they used the saber to cauterize the claw slash. Located above their naval, it stretched from just left of the belly button across their stomach all the way to their right side, under their ribs. Blood, stark and red against their pale green skin and the white of the salt flat, was soaked into their slashed shirt and the waist of their pants. The shirt stuck to them in places.

They found a piece of metal, a thin little wire, and a piece of cloth with string at the edges. Their hands, sticky and shaking, picked the string out, and moved the metal piece around the short saber’s blade with what little use of the Force they could summon up, until it was the right shape, with a point and a hole in the end of its curve. They got the string through the hole at the end and slowly, as carefully as they could, the blood on their hand now dried and cracking, they began to sew the wound. They were crying again, those broken sounds of pain and fear, as they pulled the needle through over and over and over and over. Every stitch brought fresh pain and fresh sobs. It was so much. It was almost too much but they couldn’t, they couldn’t afford to stop no matter how scared they were or how much it hurt. They couldn’t afford to be scared of dying. They had to get home. Kell was waiting for them, _they had to get home_.

They _finally_ finished the stitches and lay there panting, under the white sun and purple sky, before dragging themself, whimpering, under a shaded section. They gave a choked, cracked sound that was too tired to be a sob, at this point.

They had to get home.

How the _hell_ were they going to get home?

**Author's Note:**

> So, Cain has trauma! Because even the bubbliest of people can have darkness in their pasts. It took them another month to get back to the Temple, at which point they found out that Kell’s legion had been wiped out, and they left the Order to go looking for him (and whoever was left).


End file.
